RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Floods and landslides devastated towns in a mountainous area near Rio de Janeiro, killing dozens of people and bringing the death toll on Wednesday from days of heavy rain in southern Brazil to at least 83.

At least 54 people were killed in Teresopolis about 100 km north of Rio, the town’s mayor said, after hillsides and riverbanks buckled under the equivalent of a month’s rainfall in 24 hours.

At least 16 other people were killed in two other towns in the region, officials with the government’s Civil Defence agency said.

The rains sweeping southeastern Brazil also killed 13 people in Sao Paulo state on Tuesday and snarled transport in the country’s financial capital.

The death toll was expected to rise, with about 50 people believed missing just in Teresopolis, mayor Jorge Mario told Globo television.

“There are 48 dead, and that number will rise because rescue teams are still arriving in the areas that have been worst affected,” he said, adding that about 1,000 people had been left homeless.

“It’s the biggest catastrophe in the history of the town.”

Thousands of people in the picturesque area, known as the Serrana region, were isolated by the flood waters and cut off from power and telephone contact.

Meanwhile, heavy monsoon rains on Wednesday kept Sri Lanka’s president from visiting areas inundated by flooding that has killed 18 people, forced 196,000 from their homes across a third of the nation, and threatened food supply. Nearly a fifth of Sri Lanka’s rice paddies are either destroyed or under standing water that could wipe out the crop, the Agriculture Ministry said, raising concerns over supply shocks and higher food inflation for Sri Lanka’s staple food.

Greater-than-normal monsoon rains since early January have hit the Indian Ocean island in the Northern, Eastern, Central and North Central provinces, building up to cause mudslides, swamp roads and burst hundreds of dams and reservoirs.

Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre said that at least 18 people had been killed across the country, with a landslide in the hilly Kandy area killing at least seven people.

Meanwhile, at least 30 people may have been killed and about 1,000 homes damaged by floods in South Africa in the past week, a government estimate showed on Wednesday. There were no estimates available yet for the amount of damage caused in the major African food producer and global mining power, the ministry of cooperative governance said in a statement.

MANILA (Reuters) - Sustained heavy rain and floods in the central and southern Philippines have killed 42 people and damaged crops and infrastructure worth more than 1 billion pesos ($23 million), disaster officials said on Thursday.

Floods and landslides caused by more than two weeks of heavy rains in late December and January have displaced nearly 400,000 people, Benito Ramos, head of the government's disaster agency, told reporters on Thursday.

Major rice and corn production areas in the north and western part of the country have been spared.

"Our soldiers are using helicopters to deliver relief goods and survey areas for clearing and rehabilitation," Ramos said, appealing for food, water, medicines and warm clothes.

Most of the dead either drowned or were buried by mudslides, Ramos said. Five people are still missing, including three fisherman.

About a third of the country's 80 provinces had been affected by the rains, which have destroyed roads and bridges, small rice and corn farms and houses made of light materials, Ramos said.

On Friday, President Benigno Aquino will visit several flood-hit provinces in the central Bicol, eastern Visayas and Mindanao regions to assess the damage and determine how much money is needed for rebuilding.